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There's a good reason for that. The NSA don't consider data to be "collected" until it is presented to an employee or processed into a human readable form[1]. T
by TheGrumpyBrit 10y ago
There's a good reason for that. The NSA don't consider data to be "collected" until it is presented to an employee or processed into a human readable form[1]. This allows them to gloss over all the data they gather in the normal, dictionary definition of the word "collect", as well as ignoring any automated analysis of that data before it's presented to a human.
As far as I can tell, the NSA don't have a term to properly describe gathering and analysis of data which isn't presented to a human for analysis.
[1]: https://fas.org/irp/doddir/dod/d5240_1_r.pdf https://fas.org/irp/doddir/dod/d5240_1_r.pdf (Page 15, 2.2.1)
- cryptarch 10y agoI'm sure it's intentional they don't have a term for that. If there's no name for it, you can't accidentally name it.
- otakucode 10y agoYou are correct. I watched a documentary ages ago, years before Snowden, I believe back when the whistleblower had come out and told everyone about the black boxes AT&T put on their networks for the NSA, where it was mentioned that the biggest fear the NSA had was of ever having to appear in court and defend that exact definition of 'collect'. To the best of my knowledge, that definition has still not been challenged in court one way or another. So that's why the NSA parses their words very carefully, and likely Obama as well... but what about their critics in Congress?